There are enough qualified women to occupy board positions but a number of these companies will wait till the last minute before filling up the position, said experts.

According to data compiled by market tracker Prime Database from corporate governance reports filed by companies as of December 31, as many as 118 of the top 500 NSE-listed companies did not have any independent female member on their boards. The list includes at least 16 companies that are in the top 100.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Board of India asked the top 500 companies to appoint at least one woman independent director by April 1, 2019.

“Everybody in the industry is working on the process. Many of our subsidiaries have independent woman directors. We (Edelweiss Financial Services) will also have someone soon,” said Rashesh Shah, chairman of the Edelweiss group.

“There are enough and more qualified women to be on boards. But you have to just believe in the value of diversity,” said Shailesh Haribhakti, chairman of audit and accounting firm Haribhakti & Co and an independent director at many Indian companies.

“It is likely that, as was seen at the time of compliance of the woman director norm four years back, a lot of companies would fulfil the requirement in the final week. It would also be interesting to see the quality of such directors who are appointed and whether they are truly independent or not,” said Pranav Haldea, managing director, Prime Database.

Earlier, the Companies Act of 2013 mandated a certain class of companies to have at least one woman director on board. The regulator, in compliance with the Act, made this compulsory from October 2014. Many companies inducted a woman member from their promoter families to meet the requirement. However, the mandate to have at least one woman on board still helped improve gender diversity in boardrooms, demonstrated by the increase in female directors.

“As women constitute nearly half of the population, their point of view is very critical. And, there are enough competent women who are eligible,” Vinita Bali, former managing director of Britannia, said in a recent conversation with ET. “I have sat on boards with only men and on boards that have at least two women, and I have seen that the quality of dialogue and attention to detail shifts when you have diversity of gender,” she said.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of Biocon, agreed that there were enough qualified women to occupy board seats. “Companies tend to look only at a small pool and tend to think pool is not big enough,” she said.